Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5913837" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 278: December 2000 part 2/7PROfILES: Julia Martin is another of the editors for the new edition, coming in to replace Kim when he was promoted to managing. She was an integral part of making the new edition a munchkin's paradise, full of tightly interlocking rules, keywords, synergies and similar kewlness. Consistency, good organization, economical use of space, all the corebooks would be rather less so without her contributions. She's happy to give out tips on how to twink your own character, and hopes that she can integrate the new rules well with the forgotten realms setting, which she's currently working on. Another profile that was fun to read, but is probably a bit too keen on promoting the new edition for it's own good. Nodwick gets in trouble on his own steam this time. Previews: Not a very busy month this time. The Hero Builder's Guide is probably the biggest one. More stuff to help you build characters who are both solid mechanically (or at least, as close as possible given their lack of skill at optimization at this point. ) and in terms of background. They also continue their close association with Diablo. Diablerie converts things to 3rd edition, while once again stealing V:tM buzzwords. How's that going to work out for them?  In the novels, we have a FR one and a Dragonlance one, as seems standard. The City of Ravens Bluff finally gets to have novels set in it, as it's freed up from constant RPGA metaplotting. Jack Ravenwild <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> has amusing adventures to tell, with Rich Baker the humble scribe transcribing them. Dragonlance is also in a city based roguish mood. The Thieves Guild by Jeff Crook is set in Palanthas, and shows their attempts to reestablish larceny around these parts, which isn't easy with both the good and dark knights working together. How's a working man supposed to get ahead in a mad situation like that? This year's statement of ownership shows that the magazine has finally got it's groove back with the public. With an average of 58k and a last month run of 63, they've been gaining readers at over a thousand a month. All those teasers for the new edition have got people exited about the magazine and D&D in general. They're still probably sending out too many free copies, but that's forgivable as long as things are going well. Gotta get the reviews in other magazines for more publicity. Countdown to the forgotten realms: 6 months to go. This is once again about selling the Realms corebook to non fans. In addition to the realms specific crunch, this is where you're going to get your first info about characters above 20th level. Plus the new items, monsters, spells, etc are eminently purloinable. Of course, for all they say that the new stuff will be balanced with core material, I'm pretty sure it wasn't, with the more restricted availability of certain feats an excuse to make them more powerful. And the rules for high level characters will differ quite a bit from their final incarnations. They might pretend they have a master plan, but really, they're still making a lot of it up as they go along. Don't forget the playtesters just because the corebooks are out. Dork tower misses the point so badly it's painful. I LOLed. PC Portraits: We had a set of dwarf portraits fairly recently, in issue 261, and this is one column that's pretty edition neutral, so I'm not that enthusiastic about this. Comparing the two, the new one is noticeably more simplistic looking, with broader, more exaggerated features. It's another good example of how they're stepping away from naturalism in their artwork for a bolder and more stylised look. I wonder how much of that is the magazine's own initiative, and how much comes from the rest of the company, as they try to establish an overall look and feel for 3e to set it apart from what came before. In any case, it's very worthy of noting, as a point where I can compare like for like precisely.</blockquote>

Verification